If you read this book, you’ll be getting history you probably haven’t heard, about American Army nurses during World War II. You’ll see their bravery, endurance, and resourcefulness, their heroism under appalling conditions, their competence and professional dedication, the constant sexism they faced, the emotional trauma that destroyed their psyches, and the enemies who shot at them, Geneva Conventions be damned.

Army nurse washes her clothes in her helmet, Morocco, 1943 (courtesy history.army.mil)

Even when no particular crisis presents itself, Messineo re-creates the moment-to-moment tensions that afflict her two nurse protagonists:

So begins the long task of finishing the surgeries already in progress; stabilizing those just coming into the post-op tent; giving plasma, or whole blood when available; lifting the ‘heavy orthopedics’ with their colossal casts, arms and legs immobilized by a hundred pounds of plaster. The shock patients with their thready pulses; the boys with ‘battle fatigue,’ whimpering and taking cover under their cots, thinking themselves still in the field; the deaf, the maimed, and the blind, their heads carefully wrapped and bandaged, their tentative fingers reaching out in front of them, seared and melted together from clawing their way out of burning tanks.

Consequently, The Fire by Night bears witness to the unsung heroines of World War II (if not, by implication, all wars). Such a story is long overdue. And yet, despite its powerful moments, rendered so vividly that you feel as if you can’t take any more punishment, The Fire by Night feels incomplete as a novel. In fact, it’s more like a tendentious essay–or two of them, to be precise.

I say two because the protagonists’ stories hardly intersect, and if either were omitted, the plot wouldn’t change, only get shorter. Jo McMahon serves in Europe, whereas Kay Elliott is captured in the Philippines and spends years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Though each undergoes her own, somewhat different but always harrowing trials, after a while, their struggles seem like a catalog rather than a coherent narrative. Moreover, Messineo is plainly out to set the record straight, and her earnestness undermines her.

Of the two protagonists, Jo has the advantage. Abandoned at the front lines caring for a tent of six critically wounded or ill patients, she must constantly use her ingenuity to keep them, and herself, alive. I like this story better, especially its first half, when problems multiply, she keeps going by force of will, and the men she’s tending are just bodies, not individuals yet. On the other hand, Kay’s narrative, though gripping in detail–she’s captive in what’s essentially a death camp–remains a more solitary struggle. But to varying degrees, both stories suffer from the same flaw: They fall flat when the protagonists deal with men, not one of whom has any depth.

For example, take the captain whose undermanned infantry platoon holds the position where Jo’s tent happens to be. Might he insult her, demean her rank and abilities, and say that he can’t guarantee her safety? Sure. Would he throw tantrum after tantrum and shrug off the lives of the men in her tent? I doubt it. On the flip side, Kay’s husband is a flawless human, the mere sight of whom inspired her to remove her clothes–and that’s just about all we know of him. Back at the other extreme, when Kay and Jo trained Stateside, they worked with a doctor who sexually assaulted the nurses and threatened to blacklist them if they complained. Real problem? Of course. Real guy? No; he’s cardboard, and, to no surprise, his comeuppance arrives all too easily.

Male authors can and should be faulted for failing to draw their women characters as full people. But the reverse must also be true, and to call this novel “women’s fiction” would be no excuse. More importantly, to describe sexual brutalities perpetrated by cartoon men only cheapens the impact, when subtlety would serve much better. These themes deserve no less.

I also hope that Messineo (and her editor) pay closer attention next time to the words on the page; I was startled that a writer this capable should commit so many lapses. For instance, civilians and other noncombatants are interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, not interred, as the text says here, though that might also occur eventually, as it frequently does. A bomber doesn’t hone in on a target; it homes in. Finally, the redundant phrase historical fiction novel has always struck me as the mark of an amateur–and in this book, it appears in the Acknowledgments section. Yikes.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

More than anything, young Mary Sutter wants to be a surgeon, for which she’s eminently qualified. Like her mother, Mary’s a gifted midwife, known throughout the Albany, New York, region for her skill, tenderness to her patients, and success rate. From a young age, she accompanied her mother, Amelia, on her midwifery rounds, from which she learned to observe, study, and interpret the human body. Mary devours Gray’s Anatomy and other textbooks with a passion other young women of her generation might devote to cooking, music, or embroidery.

But the year is 1861, and mainstream medicine belongs entirely to men, who dismiss Mary’s attempts to apprentice herself–the typical path to medical practice–with contempt, puzzlement, or both. Even Amelia, her sole surviving parent, sometimes wonders why her daughter doesn’t simply accept the barrier, unfair as it is, and continue to do what she does best. Maybe she could also find a husband–not that Amelia’s was a paragon, but Mary locks many feelings inside her, including a yearning for love, hidden beneath a superior mien.

She knew that it was said of her that she was odd and difficult, and this did not bother her, for she never thought about what people usually spent time thinking of. The idle talk of other people always perplexed her; her mind was usually occupied by things that no one else thought of: the structure of the pelvis, the fast beat of a healthy fetus heart, or the slow meander of an unhealthy one, or a baby who had failed to breathe. She could never bring herself to care about ordinary things, like whose pie was better at the Sunday potluck, or whose husband she might covet should the opportunity arise, or what anyone was saying about an early winter or an early thaw . . . .

However, the outbreak of war between North and South changes everything. Mary figures, correctly, that medical practitioners will be in great demand, so she bolts for Washington to look for a posting without telling anyone at home. With typical deftness, Oliveira handles her bold action in its implied feminism: Mary’s flight raises consternation and moral censure, whereas her brother and brother-in-law may go to war without anyone batting an eyelash. Unfortunately for Mary–and the soldiers who don’t know what’s coming-nobody has counted on the complete lack of preparation to care for the sick or wounded. To call the effort disorganized would be a compliment; Oliveira captures this negligence with shudderingly vivid detail.

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (and the most famous Civil War nurse), around 1866 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Such disarray might have offered Mary her chance to serve and learn, as she hopes, but there again, she faces stupendous obstacles. Among them is the fear, not entirely groundless, that a woman among hundreds of unruly men would be preyed upon. Even Dorothea Dix, who lobbies for a nursing service along the lines of Florence Nightingale’s, will have nothing to do with Mary: Miss Sutter is too young, she has no letters of recommendation, and just isn’t the right sort. That Oliveira cuts a feminist icon down to size on feminist grounds says a great deal.

In the apparently growing subgenre of novels about socially awkward young women who love science–When the World Was Young and The Movement of Stars come to mind–My Name Is Mary Sutter stands out. I like how the author reveals the inner lives of Mary and two doctors with whom she works closely, and how the relationships with her mother, sister, and brother-in-law have dangerously sharp edges. Oliveira also captures the suffering of wounded men, the incompetent army leadership, and what it takes to tend the maimed and dying despite insuperable odds. The hospital scenes are heart-breakingly raw–be warned–but I, who am squeamish, had to read every word. Meanwhile, the narrative retains an impressive grasp of the historical background, as battles unfold and the confusion and rumor become ever more blinding.

I don’t want to give too much away, but when you have a fictional midwife/nurse with a newly married twin sister and two family members who enlist, certain things are just bound to happen. Mostly, Oliveira gets away with these predictable occurrences through vivid storytelling. But she falls short, I think, in her portrait of Jenny, Mary’s twin, who feels more explained than alive, and I want to know more about what drives Amelia, besides her devotion to family. It’s also a little hard to swallow that Mary gets her foot in the nursing door through a chance meeting with John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretary, though such things did happen in wartime Washington. What’s less forgivable, I think, is how quickly certain characters reconcile their differences. When there’s that much fury and hatred between people who love one another, the author owes the reader a fuller, and perhaps not entirely complete, peacemaking process.

Nevertheless, My Name Is Mary Sutter is a very fine novel indeed, especially for a debut effort, and I’m doubly pleased to say that about a fellow Seattle author.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

You might think that the four-day runup to Armistice Day, 1920, in London, and the burial of the Unknown Warrior that took place, would make a thin premise for a novel. After all, what tension could there be in a public funeral? Moreover, the unidentified soldier, exhumed from a battlefield in northern France, has been dead for years and belongs to no one in particular.

But he also belongs to anyone who suffered loss, which is to say, the whole nation. And as with any intimate, familial funeral, the coming ritual stirs fear, jealousy, pain, renewed grief, and fury, as well as harrowed hearts longing for release. Wake turns the national day of mourning into a family affair, one of many families. For most, loss has stunted them and left them unable to love or even venture outside their fears. Naturally, their paths cross in unusual ways.

There’s Evelyn, who works for the pension office. It’s an utterly thankless job, but she’s not looking for fulfillment. Her lover died in the war, and her younger brother, the only kindred spirit within the family, has returned from France a brittle wreck. He scorns Evelyn for being bitter, and maybe she is. But she also speaks of the anger that can’t go anywhere, because nobody will listen:

Someone should do the world a favor. They should take one of those great guns that they wheel out for the occasion and turn it around; they should train it on the massed dignitaries at the Cenotaph, in the abbey, on the king and Lloyd George and Haig and the whole lot of them, should shoot them while they sit there, their old heads bent in prayer. . . . Hypocrites, stinking hypocrites all.

There’s also Ada, who can’t quite believe her son is dead and sees his face in every crowd. Or Hettie, who makes sixpence a dance at a dance hall, and whose brother remains so shocked from the trenches that he seldom speaks or leaves his armchair.

I wasn’t surprised to read that author Hope once trained to be an actress, for her narrative often has a theatrical feel, clipping along in short scenes. She’s got an economical style, suggesting more than she shows. But cutting away before things get too complex sometimes feels like a bailout, and it restricts what you can see of her characters. This is especially true of the men, who appear to exist only in the moment, only on the surface.

By contrast, Wake portrays the women very well, showing how the war left them behind, in several ways. Evelyn curses the old soldiers who act as if they own the streets, the war, and its legacy. No matter what women did, or still do, they count for nothing by comparison, and all they hear is that their aspirations can and should go no further than having a husband and children. Without soapboxes or drumbeats, Wake vividly conveys this feminist rage, every ounce of which feels earned. Likewise, the class conflict between officers and “other ranks” comes through loud and clear, a truth that the praying hypocrites refuse to acknowledge.

On the downside, the crossed-paths aspect of Wake falls short. Hope’s a skillful storyteller, so the narrative fits together, but a few crossings feel contrived, and the coincidences mount up. Two are predictable, one of which she borrowed (perhaps unwittingly) from For King and Country, my favorite film about the war, starring Tom Courtenay and Dirk Bogarde. I don’t fault her for this–all novelists borrow–and you might as well take from the best.

What I do object to is the attitude, universal in Wake, that, once the expected glory had faded by mid-1916, nobody in Britain fought except from fear of punishment. What nonsense. Unlike the case with France or Russia, Britain’s initial allies, no mutiny ever took place among British forces, and support remained strong for a war that barely touched England’s shores. Soldiers hated the trenches and, often, the generals, but most believed in the cause, and the reverence that accompanied the burial of the Unknown Warrior stemmed partly from national pride. That the politicians basked in this feeling, as if they’d invented and deserved it, doesn’t mean that the people who fought for them were dupes or slaves.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Hannah Price wants the moon, or, to be precise (and she values precision above all else), a comet. A Quaker woman living on Nantucket in 1845, Hannah scans the skies nightly, searching for a comet that no one else has catalogued. If she succeeds, she’ll win a prize from the king of Denmark, but Hannah’s not looking for fame (though the prize money would come in handy). Rather, she dreams of contributing to scientific knowledge.

On Nantucket, or anywhere in 1845, this isn’t the path women are supposed to follow, especially Quaker women. Hannah has a little leeway, because her father is an astronomer; they repair and adjust chronometers for the ships that come to port, the island’s economic lifeblood. Better yet, her former teacher, the influential Dr. Hall, has encouraged her brilliance at mathematics and science. However, men are always the ones to decide what she can do, and where. And since her mother died when she was very young, her only ally is her twin brother Edward, now away at sea.

Into this delicate balance steps Isaac Martin, a whaling crew member to whom Hannah offers lessons in celestial navigation. Their friendship sets tongues wagging, especially since Isaac comes from the Azores and is dark-skinned. Unlike its Ohio counterpart in The Last Runaway (April 23), the Friends Meeting of Nantucket is firmly abolitionist, though hardly more tolerant. Hannah risks being kicked out of Meeting (and suffering her father’s discipline) by having social relations with a nonbeliever, proper though these relations are–for the moment.

The Movement of Stars is worth reading for its protagonist. Hannah is a very difficult person, for whom the only ready emotion is anger, and who sees slights everywhere. That she’s often correct doesn’t obscure how socially inept she is, even cruel. She’s more than dimly aware that her inability to make chitchat or contribute to the necessary social grease has cost her. Brill has done superbly here, creating sympathy for an unpleasant outcast, no mean feat. That Hannah also learns to see more clearly, extending her search for the truth of the heavens to those of human interaction, is another masterstroke. Yet she never gives up her anger at being thwarted or manipulated by men, even those she loves, and I admire her unwillingness to compromise what she believes. Against her will and love of precision, toward the end, she reluctantly concludes that “two competing Truths could in fact coexist in one mind.” (By the way, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that this ability was the test of a first-rate intelligence. It’s one of my favorite quotes.)

Unfortunately, the rest of The Movement of Stars doesn’t live up to its heroine. None of the other characters seem full to me; I’m disappointed in Dr. Hall and Hannah’s father, Nathaniel, who feel like straw men, at times. Brill tries to suggest more, and I like Hannah’s confusion about their motives, but I’m confused too. Most importantly, I can’t grasp Isaac, who reads like a stock character–the taciturn, down-to-earth sailor whose homespun wisdom turns Hannah’s life around. I believe her attraction for him, all right, for what he represents, and the internal struggle she has over the pull he exerts seems real and significant. But Isaac assumes that any hesitations she has about him must be due to race or class prejudice alone, which makes him the only man in the novel who gets away with ignoring the barriers she faces as a woman.

There’s one other way in which The Movement of Stars loses focus, and that’s the prose. The last few chapters stray from the nineteenth century in tone and manner, as when Nathaniel says, “Thy travels have certainly impacted thee.” Whoops. To be sure, it’s a first novel, and an accomplished one. But it’s fair to ask how Brill, skilled at observing interactions, would tell, tell, tell: “When she was near him, Hannah felt both exhilarated and free at the same time, the way she felt when she was observing. The idea of parting from him was excruciating.” That reads like shorthand, not characterization.

That said, I still recommend The Movement of Stars. Not only is Hannah a fascinating character, I liked reading about the whaling and Quaker communities (highly intertwined) of Nantucket.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

In a Paris still reeling from the recent war of 1870, two young women, teenagers still, share a tiny apartment and work as silver burnishers. It’s a demanding job but steady work, and Louise and Denise (called Nise) count themselves lucky to have each other’s friendship and a sound alternative to working the streets, however meager their wages. But they also dream of more, of being noticed, picked out from among the crowd.

One day, they pose before a shopwindow, holding drawing tablets, pretending to sketch what’s inside. A man approaches them, and a triangular flirtation begins. At first, Louise and Nise are careful not to push themselves forward, each concerned with not hurting the other; besides, they must at least pretend to play hard to get. But beneath the teasing, Louise senses a strong attraction between herself and the man, who calls himself Eugène, who has some money, has apparently seen the hard side of life, and who sometimes speaks with disarming, if not shocking, directness.

It all happens so easily, it seems, and yet Louise is the type to reflect on why, which is why I like this book:

It is about us. Something specifically about us. And I think we should not be surprised. It is what we wanted. With our tablets and our scheming, all the trying not to be ordinary–didn’t we want someone to notice us? To see we were different? . . . Because I do not feel ordinary. Or because I feel ordinary and different at the same time.

His name, as she finds out, is really Édouard Manet. Louise Victorine Meurent becomes his mistress, his model, and, to some extent, his muse. I didn’t recognize her name, but I certainly knew what she looked like, because she’s in two of my favorite Manet canvases, Olympe (on the book jacket) and Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Lunch on the Grass). Both created a stir for their frank sensuality and shocking directness. Having dug around a little, I also learn that Meurent became a painter too. Unlike what the novel suggests, she gravitated toward an older, more accepted style than his, which, ironically, earned her more favor than he from the official Salon.

Gibbon has imagined the artist-model relationship in fine emotional detail. I particularly like how she traces the currents that run between them, which don’t always follow the expected route. For one thing, Manet isn’t the absinthe-sodden, self-absorbed, irresponsible artist of lore, which allows him to appreciate Louise for herself, not just as an object. He’s always willing to listen to her, something that takes her by surprise. Just as important, as with the shopwindow scene, you can’t necessarily pinpoint who’s seducing whom, or what it’s for. As Louise observes, “It is not always so clear what someone wants, or what money can buy, or who exactly pays.” Without saying too much, I can tell you that between these two people, it’s more about art than sex, though there’s plenty of both.

The beginning feels a little romanticized, like a sepia photograph that’s been airbrushed. The Paris of Paris Red isn’t nearly as seamy as that of Cathy Marie Buchanan’s Painted Girls, and Louise, though she stints herself at times, seems relatively safe. The key word is relatively, however, because just as Louise has abandoned Nise, which troubles her (somewhat), she worries that Manet will abandon her. She may not starve or have to go on the street, for she has a skilled trade to fall back on. But she will lose her dreams and the connection to Manet on which they depend. As she says, money figures into it, but it’s not everything.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Early on in The Other Boleyn Girl, the more infamous Anne tells her younger sister, Mary, that Mary always listens to what everyone tells her, whereas she, Anne, accepts no limits. Both sisters get the irony that Anne is one of those who order Mary around. When I read this, I mentally rubbed my hands, anticipating an oft-told tale from a fresh angle: sibling rivalry, red in tooth and claw.

Mary Boleyn (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Public domain in the United States).

To be sure, Anne’s teeth and claws are much in evidence. There’s nothing she won’t do to advance the Boleyn fortunes and put herself on the throne beside Henry VIII, and so much the better if Mary suffers in the process.

Pushing Mary and Anne forward are their parents and uncle, who care not a farthing for their feelings, nor anyone else’s. Ambition matters above all, and when an ill-conceived jest or the failure to please His Majesty quickly enough can cost a dukedom, only the most ruthless and adept will prosper. The girls’ elder brother, George, tries to make his sisters’ lives easier if and when he can–again, a nice familial touch–but he too must play courtier. Luckily for the Boleyns, he’s good at it.

However, after this rousing, promising start, The Other Boleyn Girl drops dead. The sibling rivalry, though played for the highest stakes, feels like a courtier’s smile, flat, without depth, little more than a concept. Anne keeps hurting Mary. Mary keeps trying not to cry. The narrative keeps going round and round the same mulberry bush, as the mercurial Henry tries to figure out how to secure his throne through a male heir, while his courtiers try to guess what he’ll do next.

But it’s not the story that makes this novel feel static. It’s the characters, who seem all one way or another, all the time. Anne never does anything that’s not selfish, nasty, and conniving, whereas Mary is forever sweet and innocent. Even less believable, she has the political sense of an eight-year-old, which gives her family the occasion to tell her (and the reader) what’s what. The parents and uncle, who are never even named, come across as fairy-tale wicked rather than capable, cold-blooded schemers with beliefs and myths to protect. Henry is never more than a spoiled child with insatiable appetites. And so on.

Generic, flat characters like these arouse sentiment, which fades, rather than empathy, which sticks around. For instance, nobody likes a wicked parent, so we can cringe when they tell their scarred, brutalized daughter to suck it up. But by the fifth time they tell her, maybe we’re not cringing anymore–and, if you’re like me, you start to wonder why you ever did. It might have helped had Mary reflected on her early life or the dreams she had growing up, or what she would have wanted her parents to be for her. But she only mentions once or twice the peculiar strain–which she never really owns–of attending the French court as a very young girl.

Gregory misses a great opportunity here to develop the crux of her novel. How did two sisters, only a few years apart in age, grow up in the same, dreadful place and become such different people? Why does Anne have an incredible drive to be the center of attention, and how did she get so good at it? Maybe you’d say, Oh, that’s just backstory, and who cares? But it’s not. It’s what makes these sisters different from any other you’ve met, yet also recognizable, what fully rounded fictional characters should be. Most important, having a sense of what moves Anne would allow the reader to understand her cruelty in its context, maybe even empathize with her.

The writing doesn’t help. The dialog swims in adverbs; people don’t just say things, they say them flatly, coldly, honestly, frankly, smartly, levelly, fiercely, and so on. Since the characters’ speech needs no explanation, I felt I was being hit over the head. I also tired of characters spitting their words or gritting their teeth to reveal how mad they were, or how often Mary restates the firmly established theme about women oppressed in a man’s world.

Comparing Hilary Mantel to just about anybody is unfair. Nevertheless, I have to point out that Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies riveted me, covering precisely the same well-known history and therefore facing the same storytelling obstacles. The difference? Mantel’s characters have inner lives and complexities that make them fully formed, not just cutouts standing in for what we already believe to be right and just and true–or their polar opposites.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Among other things, this first-rate novel shows another, selfish side to the scientist, bon vivant, and wit who helped make the American Revolution. As a printer’s apprentice in 1720s Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin has already been marked as an up-and-coming young man when he seduces Deborah Read, the teenage daughter of the house where he lodges. He heads off to London, promising to be faithful, then fails to answer her letters. Deborah’s mother, who never thought much of Franklin anyway, pushes her into a marriage with another man, who disappears with her small dowry, leaving behind only debts.

On Franklin’s return, he seduces Anne, a tavern maid, who bears his child. Having taken up with Deborah again–they now live together–he asks Anne to give up her infant son, William, to him, and asks Deborah to accept William as her own. Each woman hesitates, but as they see it, they have no choice. Anne lives in desperate poverty, and she sells herself to make ends meet. Her mother already has more children than she can feed–Anne’s father has died, after a long illness–and William may not even survive childhood, if Anne keeps him. Franklin has promised to educate and protect the boy, and he has the money to make good. As for Deborah, she worries that she has little emotional hold on Franklin, and no legal claim until they’ve lived together seven years. Having William under their roof is her best chance to bind Franklin to her.

Naturally, the arrangement causes as many problems as it solves, and Franklin’s the one who comes out ahead. Cabot makes the most of this deceptively simple premise. The women suffer endless torture, some of it self-inflicted, and there’s the rub: They blame one another rather than the man in the middle. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and as the women try to exert their pull on him (and on William), the tension feels ready to explode at any moment. There’s everything here: blood, reputation, passion, fear of abandonment, loyalty, insane love for a child. These are timeless themes, but Cabot has entered her characters’ heads so deeply that I never questioned for a second that they lived during the eighteenth century. Their poignant, often fruitless, efforts to fight for the justice a woman can’t get in a man’s world needs no gloss to contrast with what men talk of, freedom from British tyranny.

Despite all this brilliance, I wonder about her portrayal of Franklin the seducer. He has a gift for making a woman think he’s entirely present with her, a poisonous trait for Deborah and Anne, who’ve never earned anyone’s attention before. But they’re attracted even before they have the chance to bask in his gaze. Moreover, they stay attracted to the point of obsession, even when they’ve learned how restless and self-absorbed he is. The dynamics make sense–Anne and Deborah crave his emotional warmth and chase it all the harder when he withdraws–but I’m not convinced that he should have hooked them so easily.

This reminds me of Cathy Marie Buchanan’s novel, The Painted Girls (reviewed February 26), in which the author narrated to chilling perfection how a self-destructive love affair played out but failed to convince me it should ever have started. That kind of attraction is no easy thing to bring off in fiction. I think Somerset Maugham succeeded in Of Human Bondage, because Philip, the infatuated young man, somehow feels more complete with Mildred, though he also knows she’s not for him. It’s that sense of completion the other two novels needed to convey.

I’m also puzzled how, in Benjamin Franklin’s Bastard, Anne mellows with the years, given how bitter her life has been. She’s more credible as a young mother, crazed for love of the child whom she can’t keep, and as a prostitute who enjoys her sexual power over men. Cabot’s trying to contrast her later-in-life calm with the more rigid, less tolerant Deborah, but I think it’s a stretch.

My review wouldn’t be complete, I suppose, without mentioning pet peeve numero uno: telling the reader how a character feels. In fairness, Cabot does this rarely, but she’s too subtle and masterful a writer to do it at all, and those instances mar what’s otherwise a superb (and eye-opening) novel.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

It’s Paris in the late 1870s, and the three van Goethem girls are living a hair’s breadth from destitution. Their father has just died, and their mother, a laundress, is too friendly with the absinthe bottle. With the landlord beating at the door, the eldest daughter, Antoinette, a mere teenager, brings the next oldest, Marie, to audition for the ballet. If eleven-year-old Marie makes the cut, she’ll get a stipend, which, however meager, will help pay the rent. Meanwhile, Charlotte, the youngest, longs to be a dancer herself, but more for the dance, not the money.

But even if the sisters enter the ballet company, there are slippers and skirts to buy, plus extra lessons without which even the most talented newcomer can’t hope to compete with her more experienced peers. Not only won’t the stipend go that far, the long hours of practice and, if she’s lucky, rehearsal for performance, drain many hours from the day. There’s little time for paying work on the side, assuming a young girl could find a job.

Unless, of course, a well-to-do gentleman who subscribes to the ballet is willing to be her patron, in which case the ballet slippers, skirts, and lessons are paid for. Perhaps too, he whispers in the director’s ear, and voilà, his protegée receives a promotion to the next of many levels within the ballet corps. Naturally, however, patronage doesn’t come for free.

This is the life that Cathy Marie Buchanan explores in The Painted Girls, and what a heart-rending tale it is. As Marie laments more than halfway through the novel,

I want to put my face in my hands, to howl, for me, for Antoinette, for all the women of Paris, for the burden of having what men desire, for the heaviness of knowing it is ours to give, that with our flesh we make our way in the world.

Marie’s one of the lucky ones. She has Antoinette to lean on, and a nearby bakery where she earns a little on the side, as well as the shy smiles of the baker’s son. Also, a painter named Degas, who prowls the ballet scene, asks Marie to model, which brings in a few more francs. But tenuous circumstances change quickly, and the van Goethems, like poor people everywhere, lack the resources to cope. Consequently, The Painted Girls shows the not-so-belle époque in its daily squalor, vividly demonstrating the social divide between artist practitioners from patrons, and the latter’s prejudices and illusions.

I like the storytelling here very much (except the last forty pages or so, which sometimes dip into melodrama). I also like how the author has depicted Marie, her ballet classmates, her patron, and Degas, with subtle complexity and depth. However, I don’t understand why Antoinette falls prey to a masochistic love affair–why does he appeal to her?–though once it gets going, her blind devotion feels absolutely real and chilling. Charlotte, the youngest sister, is a nonentity, a sketch.

Buchanan has painstakingly researched the van Goethem sisters and Antoinette’s lover, all of whom existed, and of course Degas and a few others. Strangely, though, Buchanan’s Paris is almost completely interior, giving full attention to rooms and, at times, building facades, but not streets. Is this a matter of style? To suggest claustrophobia? It’s also a bit odd that certain contemporary events–the Paris Commune of 1871, for instance–rate no mention, despite their profound aftershocks.

Still, the world of The Painted Girls deserves wide attention, and so does this good novel.

Disclaimer: I borrowed my reading copy of this book from the public library.

I’ve never been tempted to read a book because of a cover blurb, and I wish publishers would scrap the whole idea. Everybody knows that blurbs happen because the editor or author has a friend who has a friend, and that many recognized writers are pleased to say a few kind words about a new book, because someone once did that for them.

So I’ve never been tempted, until now. Did it work out? Half and half.

Alan Furst, master of the World War II thriller, offers that City of Women faithfully re-creates wartime Berlin–and that it does, in style. You can smell the ersatz tobacco, taste the spongy potatoes, and, most important, feel the intense claustrophobia, to escape which, people spend afternoons at sickeningly dreadful propaganda movies. Terror wears down Berliners, whether from the RAF bombers that blast away on clear nights, or the Gestapo, and I probably don’t have to tell you which they fear more.

The Reichstag, or German parliament, after a bombing raid. (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

Except for soldiers on leave, Berlin is indeed a city of women, elevated on the Nazi pedestal and shamelessly exploited at the same time. They are purportedly the lifeblood of the Reich, but prison or deportation await if they fail to report a neighbor’s slackness, show too little enthusiasm for clothing drives for the Eastern Front, or utter a syllable that may be construed as defeatist.

What rich, unusual material for a thriller, and Gillham begins well. Sigrid Schröder, a model wife with a part-time job at the patent office and a husband fighting in Russia, enters a passionate affair with a Jewish man. Throw in Sigrid’s mother-in-law from hell, with whom she shares a too-tiny apartment; a busybody who reports on her neighbors; and the existence Sigrid leads, starved of warmth, food, or purpose, and you have a great premise.

I like how Gillham portrays Sigrid, especially how she grows throughout the novel, and the window on her gritty, drab life held my attention. However, about halfway through, City of Women loses steam, having failed to keep its promises. Improbabilities multiply, and though I continued reading just to see how the story resolved, as a thriller, it’s flat.

For one thing, I find it hard to believe that Sigrid’s in danger, though enemies abound who constantly threaten her. The plot contains many surprises, but maybe fewer than the author intended, and rarely the kind that put Sigrid in worse trouble. Others may suffer, but not her. What trouble she has, she skates through, often thanks to guardian angels whose helpfulness left me scratching my head. Too many secrets are divulged for no apparent reason–other than that the reader needs to know?–and without serious consequence.

Gillham writes well, well enough to do better. He knows his historical ground, how to deploy telling detail, and craft tense dialogue. The beginning jumps around confusingly, but once he gets that squared away, the story moves smoothly–until the end, when it becomes bumpy once more. In his acknowledgments, he thanks his editor, whom he says went through the manuscript line by line, implying how unusual that is these days, a sad truth. But I think she missed quite a bit, most obviously where the story shakes and shudders, and the italics rattle like loose screws; nobody can speak two lines without grating on your nerves for emphasis.

That said, Gillham has talent, and I suspect what holds him back in City of Women is a lack of confidence, whether in himself, his readers, or both. I hope his next novel shows a surer hand, because if it does, it will be fine indeed.